Shepherds Pie – What is the Genuine Dish and How do You Make It?

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When my brother-in-legislation and sister-in-legislation are in city, my spouse and I like to go out to meal with them. We determined to go to a neighborhood golf club for comfort foodstuff night. My sister-in-law requested Shepherds Pie, an historic dish produced with lamb, veggies, and mashed potatoes.

But this main system did not resemble the historic recipe it experienced been Americanized. “What does it flavor like?” I asked.

“It really is meat loaf with mashed potatoes on leading,” my sister-in-legislation replied. “This is great, but it can be not Shepherds Pie.” Her remark produced me curious about the heritage of the meal. I understood that Shepherds Pie is not a pie at all, but a meat casserole, or hot dish, as we say in my house state of Minnesota.

In accordance to the Cooks.Com web-site, Shepherds Pie is a British dish made with lamb. Its cousin, Cottage Pie, is manufactured with beef. Contrary to what some believe, neither a person includes cheese. “If you see cheese any where around a recipe for possibly,” the internet site claims, “put it down to the USA’s obsession to add cheese to something that moves… “

Mark R. Vogel offers a temporary history of the dish in his Meals Reference web site short article, “The Good Shepherd.” Vogel states the recipe originated in the “coronary heart of the Scottish countryside,” which is lamb region, and is a traditional way to use up leftovers. He thinks the recipe goes back to the 1870s. While vegetables are additional currently, the initial dish was meat, gravy, and potatoes.

Vogel uses ground lamb for his recipe and provides onions, carrots, and celery. He tells how to make do-it-yourself gravy with beef broth and mashed potatoes with major product. Now which is ease and comfort meals!

Paul Merrett’s recipe for the typical dish is posted on the BBC web site. His recipe phone calls for garlic, clean rosemary, parsnips, peas and chopped tomatoes, and is a lot more of a modern-day pot pie. Some web sites say the recipe is British and some others say it is Scottish. In my search for details about the historic dish I came across a recipe for Ratatouille Shepherds Pie, which is about as considerably from a meat pie as you can get.

I make Shepherds Pie the outdated fashioned way. My rendition is based on a recipe in “The Fannie Farmer Cookbook: A Heritage of Very good Cooking for a New Generation of Cooks.” Like so several dishes that are based mostly on leftovers, there are no exact measurements. To begin with, I have about 3 cups of cubed lamb. If I am shorter on gravy, I saute some meat in a cast iron skillet, remove them, and make more gravy from the juices and meat bits in the pan.

I place the gravy, meat and a box of defrosted carrots and peas into a casserole dish and prime the combination with mashed potatoes. You may well make mashed potatoes from scratch or use dehydrated types. Bake the casserole in a 375 diploma oven for 35-40 minutes. Shepherds Pie — consolation foodstuff at its best — has withstood the test of time and new variations will undoubtedly surface.

Copyright 2010 by Harriet Hodgson.

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